By the Numbers
Chris Pine and Ben Foster are the best thing about Tarik Saleh’s off-target but-oh-so-close ‘The Contractor’.
The Contractor
Director: Tarik Saleh • Writer: JP Davis
Starring: Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Kiefer Sutherland, Gillian Jacobs, Fares Fares, Nina Hoss, Amira Casar, JD Pardo, Eddie Marsan
USA • 1hr 43mins
Opens Hong Kong June 30 • IIB
Grade: C+
It must be said: Chris Pine, Hollywood’s Best Chris (I’ll die on this hill) may not have the best agent (that’s probably, unfortunately, Pratt), but he’s consistently shown a range that escapes the others. Hemsworth might, might, be funnier, but we’ve only ever seen Pine flex his comedy muscles in dribs and drabs. And no. This Means War doesn’t count. But which other of the Chrises can do comic book charming (Wonder Woman), neo-western bank heist swagger (dead sexy in Hell or High Water), space adventure (Star Trek), medieval Scottish monarch (Outlaw/King), ironic musical (Into the Woods, and he was the best part), a young conductor with a runaway freight train to contend with (Unstoppable, which was “10 million pounds of train!”) AND do it all with aplomb and impeccable eyebrows over dreamy baby blues? That’s right. None. So what Pine is doing in the middling, not nearly daring enough The Contractor is anyone’s guess.
Pinester? Foine?
Pine stars as James Harper, a former special forces soldier who’s been honourably discharged (yet with no pension or benefits) from service after bloodwork revealed the ungodly cocktail of drugs James takes to treat a mangled knee – mangled in the line of duty of course. With bills piling up, a family to worry about, and unsavoury “privates” calling with dodgy job offers, he connects with his former superior officer Mike (Ben Foster, who is always, always a welcome presence), who promptly hooks him up with his own boss, Rusty Jennings (Kiefer Sutherland), allegedly a different breed of “private.” James’s first mission for Rusty involves eliminating a supposed Syrian bioterrorist (the fabulously expressive Fares Fares, The Wheel of Time, Westworld) in Berlin. Shit, naturally, goes sideways.
The Contractor has a lot on its mind, and for the first half positions itself as a more contemplative, slighly unconventional meditation on post-military life and what the price of being a good soldier is. Where are the five-star generals that made demands of them, and how does the military justify leaving them dangling when the medical bills start to roll in? Where do private military contractors come in, and how much of a government’s wet work should be left to them? Do either soldiers or contractors really know who they’re working for? The film has the DNA to be a fresh spin on familiar material, and Swedish director Tarik Saleh has demonstrated a knack for going splendidly off book in his work (Metropia) as well as deft eye for crime thrillers (The Nile Hilton Incident, starring Fares, is worth seeking out) in the past. The quiet opening acts are defined by Pine’s coiled, thousand-yard stare performance, so while it’s deliberate (some would say slow), the signs and portents are solid.
Just look at those brows
But writer JP Davis’s sript lets Saleh, Pine and Foster down by not going as far as it hints it might in the early going. What begins as a moody character study and rumination on brothers-in-arms angst, all dark corners and still, steady camera work, starts a downward tailspin in the home stretch as it embraces the genre elements – double crosses, hitmen, shadowy safe houses and vows of vengeance – The Contractor avoided almost assiduously to that point. It’s too bad really, because there’s something lurking just beneath the surface; the kernels of a genuinely nuanced interrogation of who guards the guardians, stripped of the inherent jingoism – more baffled than righteously furious. It’s not Born on the Fourth of July in other words. On top of that, it showcases Pine and Foster’s third team-up (after High Water and the seafaring rescue drama The Finest Hours), who demonstrate the eerily familial dynamic that is making them their generation’s De Niro and Pesci (De Niro and Keitel? Pesci and Keitel?). These two are effortless in their ability to telergraph masculine intimacy with the thinnest material, which is almost entirely undone by narrative contrivance here. Enough with the brother act. Let’s get these two in a romance. — DEK